I watched dunkey stream this entire game, and I think my favorite line was probably "if you beat this as a kid, there was actually a gas leak in your house and you just thought you beat it."
DK64 feels almost like a fever dream to me. Something about the music seems so melancholic in a lot of areas and some areas are so quiet and have such uncanny music it actually creeps me out to this day as a 26 year old, and the game doesn't have any horror whatsoever. It's weirdly beautiful and scary and amazing.
Same, rewatching these scenes and hearing all the music and sound effects brought me right back to my living room in 2000, eerie feelings, very melancholic.
Played and beat it as a kid circa 2000. I agree, to this day especially the second world’s creepy atmosphere still gets me uncomfortable. I think it’s the Aztec influence and it overall feeling so empty, like the people who built it also disappeared. Same with the Jack-in-the-box boss.
Not sure about the no horror part lol. The boss of the Toy Factory level scared the living hell out of me as a child. Everything you said about the music is dead on though.
There's a great video with the Game Grumps somewhere where they play a Banjo Kazooie game (maybe Tooie?) with the composer for that series and they just talk about the music and stuff. It's with Jontron, find it and check it out. Idk if it's the same composer as DK64.
Anyone who played this game when it came out, NEVER skiped the rap intro. It was god-tier back then. My brothers and sisters still remember every word 25+ years later.
@@EggscellentTree are you stupid? 2064 isn't even here yet, we're in 2022! This game came out in the year 64, as stated in it's title. I can't believe the lack of brains on some people
@@Tkon321yea you gotta judge games for when it came out and it was an awesome experience you really couldn't ask for more such charm and my favorite final boss fight on the n64.
@@Tkon321 it is absolutely that bad. I played it too. Goldeneye is terrible too unless you one shot kill. I loved them both as a kid and think they were good for the time (multiplayer games were basically just being invented)
For some reason I always want to roll my eyes when someone says a game 'was their childhood' , But man. This game was so long and so difficult I think I played it my entire childhood without ever beating it lmao The nostalgia is profound
I always think of how much better my childhood would’ve been if I went out and did team sports and activities like a normal kid but no, video games were basically my existence til I was 17 lol
Mine was banjo and Zelda oracle of seasons. I played banjo from like 5 years old till I was 17 a spring break with my cousin we sat down looked up the wiki and completed it in a marathon session took turns until we finished it then did number 2 which I never owned. Oracle of seasons was from like 7 years old till I was 15 looked up the wiki to beat that as well. Lmao I'm not great with puzzle games. My 7 year old son beat breath of the wild with light guidance from me though. He definitely doesn't get that from me lol.
I beat it once and then replayed the King K Rool fight over and over, dozens of times. I loved it. This game was my high as a child. I would never have the patience to play it as a grown man but also pointing out its flaws while being spoiled as a 2022 gamer is silly. The game was incredible back then.
As an 11 year old, playing this game for what seemed like an eternity, get all the way up to the end, GIVE UP and never beat it...just to have dunkey spoil the ending at my 34 years of life. Love ya dunk.
Dunkey is so good at rolling these games up into a 5 minute video and showing the highs and lows while being entertaining the whole time. Truly an artist.
This is one of the most nostalgic games for me. We never beat it as kids but a few years ago while my brother was visiting, we started up our old save file and finished it 15 years later.
Love reading this! I remember not being able to beat the first boss even for like a year! And then not being able to rescue tiny kong for months. Was a 4-5 year endeavor for my sisters and I that I’ll always cherish
I have the same story. I couldn’t beat the old school DK arcade machine as a kid and it was a hard block to getting to fight K. Rool. I beat the whole game but couldn’t get that last part. About 5 years ago I booted it up with my kid and easily beat it lol
Good on you my man, nothing more nostalgic than popping in an old classic you've played for years but never finished, only to grind that bitch out and finish it
Man I remember playing this game for hours upon hours and then stopping and then becoming an adult and looking up how much more of the game there was and realizing that I never got more than a 10th of the way through.
@@chillmolder Ehh I beat Banjo Tooie 100% at least twice before. I never beat DK64 as a kid, and when I tried to beat it as an adult I lost interest halfway through. The fact you NEED to get everything is just insane.
Showed my girlfriend this video and she said that we have similar humor. I feel like it maybe due to the fact that I've watched every video you've released for the last 11 years :D Thanks for more than a decade of entertainment!
Maybe for a platformer or offline game. World of Warcraft has over 10,000 collectible item appearances alone. I imagine other games that have been constantly churning out content over decades can boast similar numbers.
My favorite thing about this game is that there was a discovery a few years ago where they found out that there was an *additional* rainbow coin that nobody knew about.
So interesting, it was in the super tall grass and the only way to ever find it was if you noticed your player SLIGHTLY elevate up while walking over it 😂 the developers were on one
And I still go back and play it every now and then, It will forever hold that place as my favorite insanely long and impossible frustrating masterpiece
I've been gaming since the early 80s and I couldn't beat DK64. I was incapable. My little sister, however...she blasted through it. She had to be like ten years old at the time. I'm still amazed.
This is actually my favorite game to play and have passed the game at least 30 times no joke. I grew up with the game and still play it till this day and now it’s part of my soul!
Banjo Kazooie was so great they Rare just decided to double everything for DK64, the backtracking, platforming, collectibles, cutscenes, game time, game difficulty. 10/10
I honestly love the final boss fight of DK64, I remember being a kid and playing through it with my mom and uncle and screaming: "LOOK! I'M FIGHTING HIS TOES!"... I thought it was the funniest thing and really liked the animation of the toes fighting back lol
DK 64 is one of my all time favorites. It was so much fun to switch kongs and suddenly a ton of new bananas, areas, and movement options through a level opened up.
Dunk, seeing as how the holidays are approaching, just wanted to say thanks for all the great videos this year. You’ve been the GOAT on this platform for years, and your content just keeps getting better. You’ve brought so many smiles and laughs to all of us, and I’m super grateful for it. Hope you and Leah have a great Christmas. God bless bro. P.S. When are you releasing Knack 3?
@@hyperteleXii 6 hours, to me, is still insane. It takes me roughly 6.5 or 7 hours to simply beat Super Mario 64. So, DK64 in 6. Wow. Edit: I kinda skipped the part where you said it's cuz of glitches. My bad, hypertele. I mek mishtake. 😁
Its my firm belief that to this day, DK 64 still holds as one of the best video games of all time. The depth of detail in this game is wild and i still cant believe it only got 1 installment. Its the first video game i EVER played, and is still my favorite to this day
There is a personally iconic photo of me playing this game on my fifth birthday back in 2001. The framing, the pose, the fit, and the game all come together just perfectly.
Looking beyond all of the flaws, this game represented the best years of my childhood. It came in a bundle when released that had a see-through green N64 and controller plus game, and it blew my mind. It's an amazing game that has a TON of things to do with seriously difficult challenges.
The N64 era was a magical time for video games. The creativity and experimentation shown by Rare was indicative of the time and console it debuted on, for sure. I'm in the process of editing a critique of Super Mario 64 and I have to say, Dunk... I think I understand now why it's your favorite game. Without it, there would be no Banjo-Kazooie, no Conker, and no Donkey Kong 64. Truly, I think these games were lightning in a bottle for the 3D platformer genre - I hope one day we can see this kind of creativity return for the video game industry.
@@joedelisle4388 depends, Mario and Zelda are still as good as ever, Fromsoftware is releasing masterpiece after masterpiece ever since Demon’s Souls, Santamonica Studios has succesfully revived the God of War franchise, Rockstar and Platinum are making good games as well. I’m getting tired of this whole “AAA is so bad, indie games are the best”. Like for every good indie game there are 1000 indie games that suck ass. Yes, there are AAA games out there that aren’t very exciting like Assasin’s Creed but overall the big dog developers are still delivering great games.
@@frantschou2369 Zelda died for me after Twilight Princess, Paper Mario was ruined after TTYD (SPM was fun but I considered it a spinoff), basically only thing left is the Super Mario series.
This game really pushed the boundaries of what could be accomplished in the late 90's, and Grant Kirkhope is a champion. As a musician, I still mess around with the songs from this game. The music was so clever and creative.
@@cum141 I play them by ear! The music from most video games of that era won't challenge me on a music theory level, so they're relatively boring. But Grant Kirkhope's music has interesting chord changes and accidentals which keep me perplexed and intrigued. His music is highly original and challenging to figure out to a classically trained ear, which makes it fun for me!
"Pushed the boundaries of what could be accomplished in the 90s" Did it? Graphically it's worse than all arcade games from the era. In terms of gameplay, it's less deep than many titles from the 80s and even some titles from the 70s. I could certainly see how it pushed the boundaries of what was possible on a Nintendo 64, but the PSX also existed during the 90s. I know I'm comparing Apples and Bananas here but stand DK64 next to something like Vagrant Story and I think you'll see what I mean.
Gameplay-wise there was a lot of padding for sure, but the devs did a great job making it funny and wonky. The cartoony vibes of the whole package are off the charts and that's what I love most about this game. I'm glad Dunkey made heavy mention of it, surprisingly few people actually appreciate that about it.
Dunkey, yet another flawless review. Never before has anyone summarised the pain, the torment, the self-torture I endured to pass Donkey Kong 64. AT AGE 9! And you did it. We did it. Thank you.
With the numerous playable characters, humongah dungah levels, and all the backtracking it’s safe to say that Donkey Kong 64 was truly one of the first strand type games.
I remember being a little kid and being blown away by the atmosphere and graphics.. especially the water. I also remember crying and giving up at the end.
Same. It's fucking great, despite some parts of it being fucking annoying as FUCK 🤣 Like the beetle race, the DK arcade game (which I got better at), and some of the bs minigames
It's got a few annoying parts but overall it has so much charm that modern games are lacking in. I'd put it in my top 20 favorite 3D platformers of all time; maybe even my top 10.
This game was without a doubt the most hours I spent on my N64 as a kid. Over a decade later I had some roommates in college who had this among others in their collection and I nearly got kicked out because I spent a week straight beating this game instead of looking for a job to help pay rent.
FC'd it last year. There's literally a minigame that happens twice that's needs humanly impossible reaction time to beat it. Either you have a reaction time in the top %1 of all humans on the planet, or you just press start to pause it as it pops up which thing to shoot to give you enough time to beat it. This is one of the donkey kong games of all time
i rarely did the missions, exploring was enough for me! i loved it, collecting all good the bananas, finding secrets. The island with the monster in the cage filled me with a morbid curiosity, and a sadness as he cried. King K Rules HQ absolutely terrified me. so i was content with the DK island
Thank you for bringing me back to my childhood. My dad got me the jungle green N64 edition with this game, and I was so young I though you had to hold up the expansion pack to the screen in order to activate it. Never beat this game but god damn was it a world in itself. The music, the jungles, the puzzles, all so wild! Suffice to say they don’t make games like this no more.
This game was my whole childhood. I wasnt allowed to play a lot of video games, but my parents were ok with this because me and my brother could play together in the couch co-op. Such good memories
One of the all-time GOATs of Adventure Platformers. Cannot put into words how much I'd love a sequel to this game, they just don't make stuff like this anymore.
Donkey Kong 64 is clearly just trying to imitate the video game Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. They really went as far as to have the main character be named “Donkey Kong”, just like how the main character of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is named Donkey Kong. Absolutely shameful, you should review that game instead
My dad bought me the DK64 Bundle and it was the most amazing thing ever. I tried to play the game off the bat with no help and ended up purchasing the guide. When I got close to the end of game, the hardest part was the Donkey Kong arcade game you had to play. I played the game so much that once I reached the arcade level, my eyes literally felt like a sharp needle was stabbing them. Eventually I beat the arcade and beat the end boss. But yes, after playing it through, I never wanted to see this game ever again. It was so long.
this was one of the first games that showed me games aren't just for kids. When I was like 6, my friends and I all found it too hard so we used to huddle around the 64 and watch my friends mum try and beat the game... good times.
Dunky has finally done it; he's conditioned me not to believe anything in his videos I had to google if this game actually existed or if he was gaslighting us this entire time.
Got this for my 10th birthday in August, and took until Christmas to finally beat K.Rool. My grandfather was watching on, and kept saying "encore!?" in disbelief, each time the battle went to the next stage. He lived through German occupation during the second World war, but even this boss fight was too much for him! 😂
Us 20/30 year old men have a lot to complain about when it comes to DK64. But as kids? This game was awesome, enormous, packed full of content and everyone in school had it.
I remember spending what seemed like an eternity playing this game, trying to finish it. Cold Winter mornings and I’d be cozy’d up playing these insanely frustrating mini games. Fond memories 🥹
this left so many impressions in my childhood. everytime someone mentions a banana my brain makes me hear the "oooh banana" from 2:13. its been like that for 20 years now.
Thank you for admiring the atmosphere. I've had so many dreams of just laying on the dk island beach from my youth. What a beautiful set of levels and music.
i think it's very funny that dunkey referred to the expansion pak as "a thing you plug into the console to make it run the game" because that's just what a cartridge is
The pseudo-laughing sound the beetle makes when he beats you infuriates me to this very day. I haven't heard it IRL in more than a decade, but I can still hear it in my mind's ears. I think I gave up on the second race against him in Crystal Caves when I replayed the game, trying to get 100%, in college 10+ years ago. I just couldn't beat the arrogant fucker. >.< But as a bad pun enthusiast, the "Latin" names for Cranky's potions always gives me a chuckle.
